The Social Shoutout! “Big Thumb” clicks, Instagram Live with friends & more

A new report has been compiled by Hootsuite and We Are Social that found there are over 3 billion active social media users around the world!! That’s about 40% of the global population! And all the more reason to stay up to date with new social media trends and updates in our weekly Social Shoutout blog.

This week we’re looking at Facebook’s new initiative to stop those “Big Thumb” clicks obscuring your ad analytics. Instagram has added a great new feature to its Live broadcasting, Apple joins Instagram and Facebook continues its battle with Fake News.

Facebook solves ‘Big Thumb’ clicks

Research has suggested that over half of all clicks on mobile ads on Facebook are done by mistake! So, this week, Facebook announced a new initiative that is designed to reduce the likelihood of users unintentionally clicking on ads.

Unintentional clicks are measured by the amount of time a user spends on the ad or the “drop off rate” – if a user quickly leaves the page after clicking on the ad, this would be classed as an unintentional click.

The new update will mean that any unintentional clicks on an Audience Network ad will no longer be counted as clicks. In addition, if Facebook sees any abnormal behaviour, such as inflated click through rates, the ad placement will be paused to protect both the audience and the advertiser and the advertiser will be informed so they can make any necessary changes.

Go live with your mates on Instagram

Do you watch Live videos on Facebook or Instagram and just find the idea utterly daunting? Well, now you can have some help and support from your friends!

This week Instagram has announced a great new feature which allows you to go Live with your friends. While you’re broadcasting you will now be given the option to add a guest to the broadcast – they’ll be a new icon on the bottom right which will bring up a list of those currently watching, then all you have to do is add them.

Since Instagram introduced their Live video feature back in November 2016, millions of users have been taking advantage of it. The feature will remain the same when you go Live with friends – once you’ve finished broadcasting you can add the video to your Story or just discard it.

Instagram is currently testing the new feature and plans to roll out globally in the next few months so keep your eyes peeled!

Apple FINALLY joins Instagram

Now we know it’s only the beginning of August, but it’ll soon be September… and you know what that means! Apple delivers its annual keynote and gets us all super excited for the next big thing they have to offer.

So it makes sense that they’ve FINALLY set up on Insta account. The account currently has over 500k followers and, for now, they seem to be quite active. And we expect this to continue as they’re looking to their customers to create the content, using the hashtag #ShotoniPhone.

The hashtag allows all those amateur iPhone photographers (us included!) to get creative and share their impressive phone photography. And it’s definitely proving popular – there are already over 1 million posts on Instagram using the hashtag!

So, get snapping, use the hashtag and who knows – you might end up making an appearance on the Apple account.

Facebook continues fight against Fake News

After the US Presidential election, Facebook was scrutinised over the spread of fake political news on its platform and since then it has been taking considerable steps to combat the issue.

This week, it was announced that their “Related Articles” section will see major improvements to help minimise the circulation of fake news in user’s news feeds. Facebook has stated that it can now identify a higher volume of stories that may appear false or misleading. These stories are then directed to a third party to be checked – if this is the case, Facebook will show other articles in the “Related Articles” section that may challenge or contextualise the original story.

There’s still a way to go to combat the spread of fake news stories across all social media platforms but Facebook stated that input from users is still pivotal to the fight against fake news. Commenting on stories with their doubt or scepticism of its credibility helps Facebook identify the fake news as well as improve its overall programme.